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About Socialbox

This project is the Socialbox standard documentation, this project is intended to describe the standard for which Socialbox servers and clients would use to communicate over the internet.

What's Socialbox?

Socialbox is a decentralized platform for hosting social media instances, enabling users to register/authenticate on various instances and communicate with other users or communities across different instances without relying on a centralized server. This model aims to replace traditional services like Email, Reddit, and Twitter, allowing users to create communities for private, internal, or public purposes and engage in peer-to-peer communication, even if they are on different servers.

The illustration of how a Decentralized paradise should look like How peers can talk to each other even when on different domains

Why use Socialbox?

Email has been around for a long time, but it only allows us to send messages to each other but it's still great, because it allows Alice from example.com to email John at foobar.com even if both users are on different servers with the possibility of different features, but the underlying protocol still works to allow two users from different servers to communicate with each other.

But take Twitter or Reddit for example, users are constrained to create their accounts or boards on that one and only platform, if Reddit or anyone on that platform doesn't like that board, they could very well take it down and make it inaccessible to many users. Even worse if Reddit goes down entirely! Socialbox aims to fix this to allow users to explore the internet as it once was without being tied to a centralized service, so for example john@foobar.com may be able to post on cats@lol.com and interact with other users that doesn't necessarily come from lol.com or foobar.com. john@foobar.com may also subscribe to these channels and or boards and receive daily updates from their favorite sources and communities.

Wouldn't I need to create a lot of accounts?

No! The idea is that one use may register for john@foobar.com but with that sole account john may access other Socialbox instances and interact on them without ever telling lol.com or any other foreign instance what John's password is. For example, if john@foobar.com authenticates to lol.com, it's up to lol.com to verify if john is actually john from foobar.com by talking to foobar.com directly, this way lol.com can verify that john from foobar.com is actually john.

License

This project is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License v1.3, see the LICENSE file for details.

Table of contents

Specifications

Specifications are used to define exactly how each part of the Socialbox standard works, from communication to privacy, security & limitations. Servers & Clients alike are expected to follow these specification at it's core for the best results and compatibility with other systems.

UUID v4

Anything on the Socialbox world that needs to be uniquely identified with a random identifier must use the UUID V4 specification. UUID v4 is a randomly generated identifier that consists of 32 hexadecimal digits separated by hyphens.

A version 4 UUID is randomly generated. As in other UUIDs, 4 bits are used to indicate version 4, and 2 or 3 bits to indicate the variant (102 or 1102 for variants 1 and 2 respectively). Thus, for variant 1 (that is, most UUIDs) a random version 4 UUID will have 6 predetermined variant and version bits, leaving 122 bits for the randomly generated part, for a total of 2122, or 5.3×1036 (5.3 undecillion) possible version-4 variant-1 UUIDs. There are half as many possible version 4, variant 2 UUIDs (legacy GUIDs) because there is one less random bit available, 3 bits being consumed for the variant.

Source: Wikipedia

DNS Handshake

When a client wants to connect to a Socialbox server, it first needs to perform a DNS handshake to discover the server URL. Typically, the Socialbox server is hosted on a subdomain like socialbox.example.com. To determine this, the client must first resolve the main domain, example.com, and get a TXT record that contains the URL of the Socialbox instance. The required TXT record should be placed in the main domain’s DNS records with this format:

example.com.  IN  TXT  "socialbox=socialbox.example.com"

Here, socialbox is the key, and the value is the URL of the Socialbox instance. The client resolves the main domain to retrieve the TXT record, which then provides the URL of the Socialbox server.The client uses this URL to establish a connection to the Socialbox server. This process allows the client to dynamically discover the server URL.

Peer Address

A peer address uniquely identifies a peer associated with a Socialbox instance, resembling a traditional email address format, where a username and domain are separated by an @ symbol. Both the username and domain are case-insensitive, and the domain must be a valid domain name. A typical peer address looks like this:

john@example.com

If a Socialbox instance is hosted on a subdomain, such as socialbox.example.com, the peer address format does not change and remains tied to the main domain. For example, if example.com is the main domain, a DNS TXT record should be added to the main domain's DNS settings in the following format:

example.com.  IN  TXT  "socialbox=socialbox.example.com"

This record indicates that the Socialbox instance is hosted on the subdomain socialbox.example.com, while the peer address stays consistent as john@example.com. This is because clients always resolve the main domain to find the TXT record, which provides the URL of the Socialbox instance.

RPC Communication

Socialbox employs JSON-RPC over HTTP for server-client & server-server communication. JSON-RPC is a stateless, lightweight remote procedure call (RPC) protocol. This implementation is based on the JSON-RPC 2.0 specification with certain modifications to meet the Socialbox standards. Below are the modifications made to the JSON-RPC 2.0 specification:

  • Removed the redundant jsonrpc field from the request object, as the protocol is already defined as JSON-RPC 2.0.
  • Revised error codes to align with the Socialbox standard. Error codes are categorized by the first digit, which represents the error category, followed by digits indicating the specific error. For more details, refer to the "RPC Errors" section under Error Codes.
  • Request IDs use an 8-character long unique identifier instead of the regular integer. Although theoretically any string can be used, it is recommended to use CRC32 hex encoded strings for the request ID.
  • Flattened the error object in the response object to include the error code and message directly under separate fields instead of nesting them under the error object.
  • Utilize HTTP status codes to indicate the status of the HTTP request-response cycle. For more details, refer to the "HTTP Status Codes" section under Error Codes.

Notification & Request-Response Communication

Notification requests are requests where the request object does not contain a request ID. The server processes these requests silently without sending a response. Notification requests are used for one-way communication where the client does not need a response from the server.

If the client needs the results of a request, it must include a request ID in the request object. The server will then respond with a response object containing the request ID, allowing the client to match the response with the request.

For example:

SEND: {"id": "3bb935c6", "method": "subtract", "parameters": {"subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42}}
REC: {"id": "3bb935c6", "result": 19}

In this example, the client requests to subtract 23 from 42 and includes a request ID in the request object. The server processes the request and responds with the result of 19 and the request ID. The client can use the request ID to match the response with the request.

When the client sends multiple method calls within a single request, each method call must have a unique request ID. The server will respond with a response object for each method call containing the respective request ID and will omit responses for requests lacking a request ID.

For example:

SEND: [
  {"id": "3bb935c6", "method": "subtract", "parameters": {"subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42}},
  {"id": "3bb935c7", "method": "add", "parameters": {"addend1": 23, "addend2": 42}},
  {"method": "multiply", "parameters": {"multiplicand": 23, "multiplier": 42}}
]
REC: [
  {"id": "3bb935c6", "result": 19},
  {"id": "3bb935c7", "result": 65}
]

In this example, the client sends three method calls within one request, each with a unique request ID. The server processes the requests and responds with a response object for each method call containing its request ID. The server omits the response for the third method call as it does not contain a request ID.

In cases where the client sends malformed requests or the server encounters an RPC error, the server will not respond with an RPC error response object. Instead, the server will respond with an HTTP status code indicating the error. See HTTP Status Codes under Error Codes for more details.

Request Object

A request object is a JSON object that contains the following fields:

{
  "id": "3bb935c6",
  "method": "subtract",
  "parameters": {"subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42}
}

The fields in the request object are as follows:

Name Type Required Example Description
id String No 3bb935c6 Optional. The request ID, if omitted the request is a notification.
method String Yes subtract The method to be invoked.
parameters Array No {"subtrahend": 23, "minuend": 42} Optional. The parameters to pass.

Response Object

A response object is a JSON object that contains the following fields:

{
  "id": "3bb935c6",
  "result": 19
}

The fields in the response object are as follows:

Name Type Required Example Description
id String No 3bb935c6 Optional. The request ID of the corresponding request.
result Any Yes 19 The result of the method call.

Error Response Object

An error response object is a JSON object that contains the following fields:

{
  "id": "3bb935c6",
  "error": "Method not found",
  "code": 0
}

The fields in the error response object are as follows:

Name Type Required Example Description
id String No 3bb935c6 Optional. The request ID of the corresponding request.
error String Yes Method not found The error message.
code Integer Yes 0 The error code.

Error Codes

Error codes are globally defined codes that represent the type of error that occurred during a method call. The error codes are categorized by the first digit, which represents the error category, followed by digits indicating the specific error. The following are the error categories and their respective error codes:

HTTP Status Codes

HTTP status codes indicate the status of the HTTP request-response cycle. These response codes do not reflect the status of the method call(s) but rather the status of the request or response itself, independent of the method call(s).

The client should first check the HTTP status code before parsing the response body. If the status code is not 200, the client should not parse the response body, as it will contain a non-JSON encoded error message. For example, if the status code is 400, the response body will contain a message like "Bad Request," which the client should display to the user as the error message.

Code Status Description
200 OK The RPC request was successful.
400 Bad Request The RPC request was invalid or missing required fields.
500 Server Error An internal server error occurred during the RPC process or the server is unavailable.

-1xxx: RPC Errors

RPC errors are errors that occur during the remote procedure call (RPC) process. These errors are related to the communication between the client and server and the method invocation process.

Code Reason Description
-1000 Invalid Request The request object is invalid or missing required fields.
-1001 Method not found The requested method does not exist on the server.
-1002 Invalid Parameters The parameters passed to the method are invalid or missing required fields.

-2xxx: Server Errors

Server errors are errors that occur on the server-side during the method invocation process.

Code Reason Description
-2000 Internal Error An internal server error occurred during the method invocation process.
-2001 Server Unavailable The server is unavailable and cannot process the request, usually due to maintenance or downtime.